KuCoin

KuCoin was founded in 2017 by a China-based team including Chun Gan, Ke Tang and Johnny Lyu, raising roughly 5,500 BTC (about $27.5 million at the time) via an early ICO before relocating its headquarters to Singapore.

In November 2018, KuCoin closed a $20 million Series A led by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners and Neo Global Capital to fund global expansion and technology development.

In September 2020, KuCoin suffered a major breach in which about $281 million in crypto was stolen after hot-wallet private keys were exposed, with North Korea's Lazarus Group blamed; roughly 88% was recovered by February 2021.

KuCoin launched its own KuCoin Community Chain (KCC) in Q2 2021, then raised $150 million in a May 2022 Series B led by Jump Crypto at a $10 billion valuation, followed by a $10 million strategic investment from SIG.

In December 2023, KuCoin settled with the New York Attorney General, paying $22 million and exiting New York after operating without proper registration as a securities and commodities broker-dealer.

In January 2025, KuCoin pleaded guilty to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business, agreeing to about $297.4 million in fines and forfeitures and a two-year U.S. suspension, with both co-founders stepping away.

KuCoin Thailand launched with ERX in April 2025 and USDT-denominated tokenized stocks (xStocks) debuted in July 2025; in February 2026 Austria's FMA barred new business and a favorable CFTC settlement followed in March.

Regulatory pressure continued: on March 30, 2026, a CFTC consent order permanently barred operator Peken Global from serving U.S. users (a $500K penalty), bringing cumulative fines to about $300M; in April, KuCoin became the only global exchange in Nigeria's crypto regulatory pilot.

On the token side, KCS maintains a buyback-and-burn funded by 10% of quarterly net profit, with about 57.8M KCS burned to date (28.9% of the 200M cap); in June it upgraded the KCS benefits system, and KuCoin 5.0 is planned for October. The KCC chain is largely stagnant, with TVL under $1M.

On February 19, 2026, Austria's FMA imposed a new-business prohibition on KuCoin EU after it lost its AML and sanctions officers; the ban was lifted on May 18, but a separate February 18 supervisory decision on governance and management remained in force, leaving full operations barred as of July.

On June 19 KuCoin began its ninth-anniversary program, reporting more than 45 million users and upgrading KCS benefits to merge fee tiers, rewards, payments and ecosystem privileges into one account structure. On July 9 KuCoin Pay added local rails in Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Bangladesh and Zambia, supporting Mercado Pago, Yape, Plin, SPEI, bKash, Nagad and MTN and Airtel mobile money, across more than 50 crypto assets with no payment fee. Its Q3 roadmap also includes Web3 wallet swap routing and limit orders, an institutional lending upgrade, FinChain's FUSD collateral mirror, and ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO 22301 certification. Future strategy and roadmap: complete European compliance remediation to restore full operations, build payments, RWAs and institutional lending into new growth areas, and use KCS to tie together fees, rewards and governance.

KuCoin's Future strategy and roadmap: KuCoin's European route trades licences for legitimacy and legitimacy for institutional clients: the Austrian FMA's MiCA authorisation covers 29 EEA markets excluding Malta, Vienna was chosen as a single hub to avoid multi-jurisdiction fragmentation, and former LSEG executive Sabina Liu runs KuCoin EU as managing director, importing institutional sales experience directly. The cost sits on the same ledger - parent Peken Global pleaded guilty in the US, forfeiting $184.5 million and paying a $112.9 million penalty while exiting the US market for two years - so Europe must tighten listings and risk assessment and differentiate on compliance-first positioning rather than token count. RWAs and tokenised securities wait for MiCA's later phases and clarity from ESMA pilots, with regulators setting the pace rather than product.

Michael Gan founded KuCoin in 2017 after holding technology management roles at payments and internet companies, where he worked on clearing and risk systems. He stayed involved in direction as founder, then stepped back from daily management after 2023, handing operating control to a professional team while keeping a board-level seat.

BC Wong is the current CEO, appointed in 2025 after running legal and compliance internally and leading settlement proceedings with the US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and has since rebuilt the legal, risk and audit reporting lines. Co-founder Johnny Lyu was previously global CEO and moved to an advisory role in 2025; co-founder Eric Tang owned early technology and security architecture and still runs the security team. Support and operations are split by language region, with local heads reporting to the CEO and the founder limiting himself to board meetings and senior hiring.

KuCoin charges 0.1% maker and 0.1% taker on Class A spot assets at VIP 0, 0.2%/0.2% on Class B and 0.3%/0.3% on Class C, with a 20% discount when fees are paid in KCS.

KuCoin charges 0.02% maker and 0.06% taker on futures at VIP 0, falling to 0% maker and 0.025% taker at VIP 12.

KuCoin holds an Australian AUSTRAC digital-currency-exchange (DCE) registration and, in November 2025, obtained an Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) crypto-asset service provider (CASP) licence under the EU MiCA framework, passported across the European Economic Area.